


Outgunned, Overwhelmed, Pissed, & Struggling

by Hiruma_Musouka



Series: Through the Looking-Glass, Weirdly [3]
Category: Naruto, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, F/M, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rare Pairings, Slow Build, so much sass and snark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-21 01:39:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6033397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hiruma_Musouka/pseuds/Hiruma_Musouka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one with sense wanted to be on a battlefield in a “target rich environment”, but Jedi Knight Tobirama Senju would willingly go back in lieu of the option he was currently stuck with.</p><p>Madara’s not certain how anyone stupid enough to be a beacon in the Force even made it past twenty, but he’s not passing up the chance to find out how it was done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Down the Rabbit Hole

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sith Obito picture](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/176773) by mangozjebbardzo. 



> A bunch of thanks to [blackkat](http://blackkatmagic.tumblr.com/) who acted as a sounding board for thoughts about Naruto characters, [elenathehun](http://elenathehun.tumblr.com/) who gave me feedback and answers for Star Wars questions, and [Lauren](http://dreamer-stargirl.tumblr.com/) who read over Ch.1 and 2 for general feel, logic mistakes, and grammar.
> 
> I'll update tags as I go along, so minor characters will get dropped as others become more prominent and potential spoiler tags won't go up until after the chapter in question is posted. But no archive warnings will change to my knowledge.

"Get down!" Tobirama ordered as he vaulted over the teenaged padawan, his lightsaber a flash of dark blue as it seared through the creature's neck.

Padawan Itama hit the ground and rolled just in time to avoid decapitation by another of the damn things, and Tobirama reached for the creature with the Force even as he battled another three using his lightsaber.

Except it was near impossible to get a firm grasp on any of them in the Force. All of them felt like the cloying tar of Darkness, but attempts to use mind tricks or simple telekinesis tended to slide away like oil separating from water. Even more disturbingly was that while they appeared alive by any definition of the word, every one of the several dozen beings permeating the settlement's streets had _precisely_ the same Force signature. And while their identical white-green appearance certainly inspired thoughts of amoral cloning and genetic experiments between some vicious plantlife and a humanoid species, no clones could possibly have the identical signature. It simply wasn't possible.

Except it was obviously happening, which meant that Tobirama was missing some factor.

"Master!" Itama called out suddenly, as a separate Force string latched on to the teen's pursuer, followed by Tobirama's opponents and all the creatures in a 30-meter radius, and then slammed them together like debris drawn into a black hole. Tobirama took ruthless advantage of their stunned entrapment and quickly beheaded them with augmented strikes before looking towards the approaching steps.

Itama had trotted over to meet his Jedi master, absently shaking sand out of his tunics on the way, and looking greatly relieved as the rather short, red-haired man reached up to briefly place a steady hand on the boy's dual colored hair.

"Knight Akasuna," Tobirama greeted with a nod.

"Knight Tobirama," the telekinetic replied passively, grey-brown eyes drifting back to examine his padawan. The man's lips tilted down slightly at the varying cuts, but they were all lucky it wasn't worse considering the pair had been separated over an hour ago when the latest resurgence started.

After all, fighting inside a civilian city was _usually_ more dangerous for both Jedi and non-combatants. Cities had small streets, idiosyncratic layouts, and _far_ too many places for enemies to hide or plan ambushes. And that didn’t even include the possibility of damaged architecture resulting in attacks through walls or, more stressfully, buildings being dropped on your head. Yet Selk’s block-long, reinforced buildings and wide streets with few alleys made it harder for the creatures to corner them or approach unseen. It wasn’t the worst battleground for a padawan like Itama who wasn’t being trained to specialize in fighting.

"Where have you been, Master Sasori," Itama asked, eying the hovering corpses a bit uneasily. Akasuna's left hand moved slightly and the creatures' remains lowered to the ground.

"I was delayed by a larger force that appeared from the ground in the north-west quadrant," he replied, folding his hands within his sleeves and catching Tobirama's eye before walking northeast towards the central district, padawan at his heels. "Once you relayed that you were accompanied by another group of Jedi, I recruited further support and ensured they were aware of the situation we face here."

Tobirama closed his eyes briefly, confirming in the Force that the only active hostilities were currently in other districts and then followed. Although...

"When you say 'appeared', did they surface from the ground itself or suddenly appear without warning?" he questioned, following behind the duo and keeping narrowed red eyes focused on the area around them. Selk’s evacuation protocols meant that the storm shielding was still active and buzzing lowly with power around most of the buildings, but that was no reason to get careless.

"Both," Akasuna replied. "Several of the knights personally witnessed them rising as if made of earth, but leaving behind no visible change to the ground except for a lingering miasma of ill feeling in the soil. Another padawan had her back to a concrete wall and even with 365 degrees of sight, she was nearly disemboweled when it appeared right next to her."

"A Hyuuga couldn't see it coming?" Tobirama repeated, frowning at the implications. That humanoid species had incredible eyesight and combined with Force abilities and the heightened adrenaline of battle, it was essentially impossible to approach them unawares. And their sight detected infrared and a much larger spectrum of light than other humanoids so any tech that could be doing this would have needed to be intentionally built to withstand their eyes.

The probability of such wasn't that high.

"That means it's most likely an unknown Force technique, doesn't it, Master?" Itama asked, fingers tensing on his weapon.

_That would be the worst option, yes_ , Tobirama thought, exchanging a wordless glance with the other knight. The creatures were already incredibly dangerous and fast and unlike any humanoid the Jedi had been taught about, and the Order's education was extensive. They seemed to have limited sentience, but in turn they possessed something similar to a hive mind or collective consciousness. Once a trick was used, they were _all_ aware of the trick. It quickly became a matter of sheer power or skill to take them down because cunning, traps, and outwitting them were made futile as they learned. To add on Force abilities to that...

"What reinforcements did you acquire?" Tobirama asked, changing the subject as Itama grew more nervous. The younger Senju rightfully should never have been on this battlefield with his master, but the pair had simply had the misfortune to be on the scene when the first attack occurred and there'd been no dormancy period long enough justify sending them off.

Hashirama would probably say it was a rare blessing from the Force that Knight Akasuna was such a deadly combatant for multiple attackers despite his intelligence specialty. Many other Jedi would have simply died without even managing to relay knowledge of the attack back to the temple.

"A merchant who... happened to be nearby," the Knight answered, swiftly moving left through a large hole in a smaller building to take a shortcut to the next street. When they exited back onto the road, they had to abruptly dodge around some large crates that had been abandoned near a store during the evacuation yesterday.

Tobirama resisted the urge to glare at the man.

"A _merchant_ ," he verified, temper rumbling a bit before he released it to the Force. The very idea though: recruiting a _merchant_ in a battlezone.

"More like a Jack-of-all-trades."

"Mr. Deidara is here again then?" Itama asked, perking up a bit before wilting in the face of Tobirama's ire spiking back up in the Force. He reigned it back in quickly though. It was hardly the student's fault that his teacher had lost all sense.

"Yes," the red-head answered, actual irritation shading his tone. "He arrived two hours ago apparently."

"We shut down all ports near this city because of the last 37 hours of periodic attacks," Tobirama said, eyes narrowing.

"The brat took it as a challenge," the Knight replied, Force lashing out to the left to grab three enemies before whipping them into the ground with enough velocity to kill them in a shattering crunch of bone and flesh. Tobirama frowned at the gory scene perpetrated within sight of the fourteen-year-old next to them, but there were only so many methods to kill with when using telekinesis and the beings were dangerously resilient. As it was, the boy just shivered uneasily and actually moved closer to his master who glanced back but made no mention of Itama's reaction.

"Mr. Deidara is a..." Itama fumbled for a moment, "well, a friend, I guess? Master Sasori met him back before I became a padawan once or twice and he... just kind of shows up sometimes? Well, maybe more than just sometimes. Kind of a lot?"

Tobirama wasn't sure how to respond to what didn't _quite_ sound like unprofessional and unbecoming recklessness from _Sasori_ _Akasuna_ who took preparation and forethought to a deadly level. "You take him on missions."

The knight actually scoffed that time, "He is an adult, and he simply shows up: I take the brat _nowhere_. He's highly Force sensitive. I'm nearly positive that he's close to my level of strength in raw power. His awareness of minute details concerning things that catch his attention is also impressive. "

"I think he can actually feel where we are," Itama offered as they darted through one of the rare crystal parks, ignoring the spray of water shooting upwards from a broken fountain. "He meets us in transit sometimes so it's not like someone's telling him where we're going or anything. Although I think he actually tracks down Master Sasori rather than me because he never finds me first if we're in different places."

"To my great misfortune," Akasuna input.

Padawan Itama actually gave a grin at that and mouthed _They're friends. They like to argue_. behind his teacher's back.

"That hardly changes the fact that there's no benefit to having an untrained civilian here," he said, resuming his original point, tempted to pinch the bridge of his nose had he been willing to shut his eyes in this environment. "Force potential means nothing if not trained."

A flat glance from eyes half lidded: "While the fool may often fail to prepare sufficiently enough, he's acceptably capable. Certainly more preferable than the numerous other sentients that we cannot evacuate and who you'd prefer not being here."

"And his skills?" Tobirama asked, one eyebrow raised.

Akasuna seemed disinclined to answer except for a tilt of his head in the direction they were heading towards. His padawan at least had better manners even if the boy seemed uncertain suddenly for no reason.

"He's... well..." the boy trailed off.

A distance away, close to the spaceport in the north-central area bordering the scrublands, a rumbling blast suddenly went off. Tobirama started running. It was followed rapidly by many smaller and... strangely uniform blasts.

_It's not the right sound for blaster fire or other projectile weapons. Some compact explosives? It's possible there were some available in the spaceport waiting for transport. If the creatures have resurged there, one of the others might have taken advantage of the stock to help manage the numbers,_ he considered.

Itama laughed a bit weakly from where he and Akasuna were following behind him. "He's a bit explosive?" the boy offered.

" _That’s_ your _merchant_!" Tobirama demanded as they ran.

The knight gave him a dirty look, "I claim no responsibility for the brat, but there's a reason he hasn't gotten himself killed sneaking around my missions."

"Not the subtlest person in a fight though," Itama commented under his breath.

"Using explosives violates local laws on the majority of planets and brings about property damage that would get you noticed on others!" he snapped back as they finally reached the center square of the city and veered north to reach the spaceport.

"Well, to be fair, Mr. Deidara doesn't really blow things up without a purpose. Or, you know, in areas where it's too troublesome to avoid getting arrested. And Master Sasori's already informed him that was the last time we were bailing him out."

_Am I actually hearing this?_ Tobirama thought to himself, not even looking them anymore.

"And he did deserve it!" Itama insisted defensively, apparently having realized how his earlier statement sounded. "He saved us a month of time and an encounter with the Hutts, and he only got caught because I messed up! It wouldn't have been right to leave him there like that."

Akasuna's flatter than normal expression implied _he_ would have been perfectly happy to leave 'the brat' there to suffer the consequences if it hadn't been for his padawan's guilt about the matter. Especially since it had probably only encouraged the 'merchant' to keep showing up.

"Tobirama!"

"Master Mito," he greeted as the red-haired Jedi waved to them from the spaceport entrance. "What's the situation like in this area? We've cleared the south-west quadrant for now with nothing sensed in the south-central or west-central."

"It's under control," she answered, waving them in with a polite greeting towards Akasuna and a smile for Itama. "We had a few mass swarms suddenly manifest out of the tarmac in the landing areas outside, but some unusual help allowed us to quickly deal with them wholesale before they spread out further."

"The explosions from earlier?" he asked dryly.

"Not exactly our normal methods," she confirmed with a nod, "but it's quite fortunate this time. We only have seven Jedi on the ground right now. Without being able to identify how the creatures are arriving and stop them, we simply don't have the ability to cover the entire city with these few people."

"Do we have any information on them at all?" Akasuna asked with a frown. "Nothing from my network matches what we have here."

"No," Mito answered. "Knight Ebisu and his student have been unable to find anything that remotely matches so far in the archives on Coruscant, and the Corellian archives are younger. It's unlikely they have it, but we've asked another team to search there as well. At this point, we're referring to them as 'Drones' because of the apparent collective mind."

"Why have none of the other backup teams arrived?" Tobirama questioned, reworking his plans as much as possible to account for the limited fighters. "I was informed that another thirteen Jedi at minimum were on route to help contain this."

"There's a large ion storm going on that started engulfing the main hyperlane route nearby this planet. Anyone who didn't manage to get in ahead of it is having to divert to avoid it. It's adding onto the travel time so the next arrival won't make it for a minimum of nine hours, and they'll be staggered coming in," Mito said, frowning.

It was definitely bad news. The attacks had a regular pattern for timing which meant they could potentially have shifts sleep between them, but it had started two days ago and all the Jedi present had already been going for a minimum of fifteen hours. If Akasuna's attack style wasn't so physically minimalist, he would have already dropped from exhaustion from managing the first ten hours with only his padawan, followed by the rest of it. As it was, the Knight was probably hiding a migraine from intense Force overuse compounded by the concentration needed for his work.

And none of the Jedi dossiers he'd read in preparation for heading this mission mentioned a species whose circadian rhythm was designed to go more than thirty-one hours at best.

"Do we have information on methods for killing them? They're very resilient and they can regrow limbs with time, but beheading is effective and Akasuna verified that mass trauma also puts them down."

"Well, you can always blow them up," a cheerful voice input.

A young blond man with long hair covering his left eye approached them, casually tossing a thin cylinder up and down. He was dressed in the typical style for spacefarers except for what seemed to be a modified crossbow in his right hand and an open messenger bag hanging by his left hip which gave Tobirama suspicious feelings just _looking_ at it. The man also had a strangely active Force signature for someone who was _supposed to be_ completely untrained.

"Hello, Mr. Deidara," Itama greeted.

"Hey kid. Nice to see you haven't gotten yourself gutted, stabbed, blown up, or kidnapped to be a paramour to some sick old freak with control issues and bad hygiene, un."

Itama groaned softly, burying his face in one hand as Tobirama and Mito both looked at the student-teacher pair with raised eyebrows.

"Were you the one that made that crossbow or did you have a professional do it?" Akasuna asked, ignoring them both.

"I am absolutely capable of making my own supplies, Sasori-no-Danna. There is not a flawed part in this entire get up this time. I checked it twice like you showed me and besides," Deidara said, patting his bag with a smirk, "the bow is just the delivery system, un."

Tobirama tried to place whether he'd heard that accent before and what planetary language 'Danna' might be from. Mito, however, turned and gave Akasuna a _look_ which her fellow red-head met evenly, arms crossed but with the fingers of both hands freed up. Itama gave them both a slightly concerned glance, but slid over when the blond gestured for him and quietly argued as the man started loading him up with something that appeared to be small birds?

"...not saying it's not, kid, but that lightsaber is short-range and you're not a natural with it. Take them and try not getting killed. Funerals are boring even if Jedi ones are mildly artistic, and Danna will be totally bitchy to deal with if you kick it, un."

"There is nothing artistic about _any_ funeral service, you ill-educated philistine," Akasuna injected, eyes narrowed slightly.

"You set people _on fire_ \--"

"Your predilection for arson doesn't give it artistic flair."

"It's the _ambiance_ and the symbology that makes it art, even if it still sucks as art and could be improved by--"

"Blowing up bodies isn't suitable _nor_ is it art in any--"

"Gentlemen," Mito interrupted, eyebrows raised as she looked at the two men. " _If_ we could kindly stay on the pertinent topic we're currently concerned with, that would be appreciated."

_See,_ Itama mouthed at Tobirama, dodging Deidara's distracted slap to the head _, I told you that they like to argue_.

Apparently so, Tobirama admitted. Which was surprising, given that Hashirama had once bet Mito quite a large amount of Naboo delicacies that Akasuna wasn't physiologically capable of reacting strongly to anything.

"Come along," Mito said, the authority of an established Jedi Master making her words a subtle command. "I have a droid working on an accurate city map to mark the points where they've appeared and when, and it should be finished consolidating all the available data from the last few days."

"And if it's random, un?" Deidara asked, interested as he fell into step beside Akasuna.

"You'll find that very little in life is truly random, Mr. Deidara, so long as you've the mind the see the hidden patterns," Mito replied, sweeping off towards one of the parked starships. "And I'm quite interested in finding who made this particular pattern."

" _Who_?" Tobirama repeated sharply.

Master Mito merely hummed. "Call it a feeling."

.

* * *

.

The current code of the Jedi Order was something that foundlings like Tobirama had grown up with practically from birth. Unlike the rare Jedi trained from an older age, the Code was very much a part of who they were, regardless of what their thoughts on it were. Tobirama had always done his best to adhere to it even with his personal failings at managing his temper and his occasional arrogance.

After all, there was much wisdom to be found in the Code: _there is no emotion, there is peace... there is no ignorance, there is knowledge... there is no passion, there is serenity... there is no chaos, there is harmony... there is no death, there is the Force._ And of course, there was the less formalized advice from the elder Jedi: _Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering_. All of these emotions were wisely avoided or dealt with by Jedi during meditation and day-to-day life.

That being said: Tobirama _hated_ deserts.

It was more hyperbolic than the raging emotion spoken against by Jedi everywhere. After all, even Jedi were not immune to the habit of exaggerated speech that spanned so many sentient species. However, it was also perhaps more passionate than he should have permitted himself. He had tried his best to manage the constant irritation inspired by that particular environment, but...

Well, once you have a more than generous handful of fellow Jedi who would cheerfully do paperwork acrobatics or actual groveling to the council if necessary to avoid being partnered with you for another desert mission, it was impossible to avoid admitting there was a problem.

Simply put, Tobirama got pissy, vicious, and steadily more short-tempered and sharper-tongued the longer he had to stay in a desert. Especially if he also had to simultaneously deal with stupid, short-sighted or self-centered people. It used to be the absolute despair of his otherwise proudly fond master. The woman had been a genius herself and a genuinely nice Twi'lek even in the face of subtle or blatantly racist comments that had made a teenaged Tobirama bite his tongue to stay quiet. The only times Tobirama had ever seen her approaching frazzled was when he and a desert were involved.

Apparently, it was harder to balance the heat, the diplomacy, the egos of fellow sentients, and the potential danger involved when you also had to wrangle a teenaged boy-human who had to drown in sunscreen to avoid broiling and who quickly became a knife-sharp, grumpy, pathological truth teller with no care for how many blasters are armed and in the room.

Tobirama was never amused about how his master fondly reminisced on how much more diplomacy she learned during his teaching years compared to _the entire rest of her career_ , but he couldn’t exactly contradict her either.

Hashirama had always found the entire thing incredibly funny to the bafflement of all their friends and former creche mates.

So needless to say, Tobirama had been unenthused right from the point where he saw the destination on the mission brief, but a Jedi went where they were called. And the Council might very well have learned something after all, given that all the Jedi on this particular mission had worked with Tobirama before on other non-desert missions. And even if he was officially heading the task team on dealing with this threat, having Master Mito there to research the underlying cause meant there was less chance of interpersonal clash to begin with. Very few Jedi were willing to act up around such a respected master and Mito had a way of calmly inspiring people with her skills, competence, and manners. Tobirama always found her very enjoyable and relaxing, even if he still failed to understand why the older woman paid attention to his self-proclaimed brother.

Regardless, with all the talented and competent Jedi on this mission, Tobirama had been certain (even after they hit the ground) that they would manage to successfully complete their goal. They would figure out what was happening with the absolute minimum of civilian deaths and with hopefully no deaths among their own if luck and the Force was with them at all.

... Unfortunately, luck was something they wouldn't end up having this time.

.

* * *

.

"Alright, everyone!" Mito called out, scanning the circle of assembled Jedi, and serenely ignoring the city and government officials hovering uncertainly to her left. Notably, Deidara had included himself with them rather than the onlookers by claiming the spot on the other side of Akasuna from Padawan Itama and offering a friendly smirk to Knight Kamizuki's sideways look.

They had ended up gathering together inside the shielded hangar of the local spaceport once the other Knights had trudged back in from their own sectors of the city. It was safer to convene here, after all, where the shields would prevent any surprise attacks if the Drones broke pattern. However, it did mean that all of the “big fish” who’d come to meet the Jedi were able to observe them, along with those citizens who either worked at the spaceport or had been caught there when the evacuation order had gone out.

Tobirama really didn’t envy Akasuna the effort it had apparently taken to get that order issued in the first place. The local tunnels that connected the city buildings underground were traditionally not blocked off when the shields went up for a storm lockdown. Knight Akasuna had sensibly insisted that they be shielded off as well, of course, which had made everyone in Selk really unhappy, given that one of the first things the local mayor had asked him and Mito when they touched down was to repeal that order. Tobirama had taken no real pleasure in explaining in very _small_ words why they would not be doing that, given they had no known limits to the Drone’s ability to manifest in different locations.

He _did_ take a bit of pleasure in the fact that all the officials avoided him in favor of Mito now. Apparently she looked safer. It was extremely amusing to all the Jedi here who had seen Mito fight in demonstrations before.

Master Mito nodded at the small droid next to her who beeped and started up a hologram. Starting from the planetary view of Samaria, it quickly zoomed the display in on an aerial view of Selk before adding a transparent grid over the city.

"Given the information provided by Knight Akasuna and the Samarian government, you are all aware that the attacks have been ongoing for roughly thirty-eight hours now, with periodic breaks ranging from five to eight hours. However, by utilizing satellite based technology to better document the locations for each attack, we've discovered that this is incorrect."

The display of the city rapidly filled with small, individual red pins and larger light blue circles.

"Each blue circle encompasses a group of Drones that manifested together. As you can see, they're concentrated wholly into the western and central quadrants with the south-central having nearly no attacks and the northwest quadrant having 1.5 times as many manifestations as any other quadrant. Following that logic, I had R3-78 expand the map into the northwest scrublands to determine how large the radius was for these creatures."

Knight Hagane gave a low whistle as the map expanded a few dozen kilometers, revealing nearly twice as many appearances with a good sixty percent of them focused around a recessed crater just inside the desert itself.

"All of these have occurred starting _110_ hours ago, but had gone _unnoticed_ and unreported up to now," Mito elaborated, shifting dark eyes towards one of the well dressed Samarians nearby who tried valiantly not to wilt in the face of her subtle disapproval.

"Master Jedi, er, Jedis, the surveillance you were given access to doesn't report to a local level like our city government. We had no way of alerting you to the correct details about the matter!" he exclaimed, radiating nervousness under his bravado.

"You're stating that you just didn't _notice_ strange and murderous non-sentients appearing en masse outside your borders?" Knight Ao asked, eyebrow raised over his patch as he turned to stare at the civilians with his remaining lavender eye. His padawan beside him seemed torn between intentionally disconcerting the civilians with her own identical eyes and fussing over a shallow gash she was bandaging on her master's arm.

The man spluttered briefly, but was interrupted by one of the security guards behind Hagane snorting.

"Uh course not. Not a single natif Samarian e'er heads that way and all the roads and pathways head out towards the east and south. Ain't no reason we'd a seen 'em," he explained with a split lip, crossing his arms and staring back as they all turned to look at him.

"Isn't a path straight north the most efficient way to reach the subregion's capital?" Tobirama questioned, narrowing red eyes at the almost palpable unease radiating off most of the civilians in the space port. Knights Gou Zu and Mei Zu exchanged a silent communication to his right behind their goggles and rebreathers and subtly signed at Ao with a flash of tangerine and tea rose colored fingers.

(Years later and Tobirama still hadn't forgiven his Master for picking up that undercover mission involving interior decorating.)

"Well yeah," the man admitted with a shrug, "but you're not gonna get anyone willing tuh go that way. It's bad luck. Better to swing east a bit and then head north."

"What type of 'bad luck'?" Mito questioned evenly while Tobirama caught Ao's eye. The older Knight made sure the other Knights were watching and then, blocked from view of the officials by Tobirama, Ao used a more common dialect to sign that something in that direction both felt and looked strange to the Kel Dor and Hyuuga pairs respectively.

"The lethal kind," he said dryly.

"It's just a superstition!" another official argued, a strained smile tossed to the Jedi as they waved a tense hand dismissively.

"Not when it's got a body count, it ain't."

"How long has this bad luck been prevalent?" Tobirama questioned, cutting in forcibly before embarrassment or pride could cloud the facts in favor of saving face.

"Always, sir," said a different guard politely. "The town's quite a few centuries old at this point, but that area has been trouble since the very beginning. People don't come back sometimes or they come back _strange_. I can't quite describe it, but it's just _not right_ over there and it's more so the closer you are to that bowl in the ground."

"That part's more recent, though," the first man commented. "Area's the same, but the ground there caved in about... _hey_ , Jerik!" he yelled over his shoulder, the “polite man” beside him looking pained as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "When'd that cursed hole open up?"

"I think it was about six years ago, perhaps, Master Jedis," the second man commented, hand still over his face as he punched the first man in the arm, earning a glare.

"What was that for?!"

"Six years," Tobirama considered, ignoring the hissed condemnations continuing on about proper behavior. "It seems unlikely to be related directly to this incident with that kind of time gap, but the location is a definite concern."

"We could divide in half, leave one group here and send in the other to investigate at the beginning of the next five-hour gap," Kamizuki offered up. "It would give the group more time to explore unimpeded while safely escaping before they linger long enough to get outnumbered."

"We might well use that method, but we have two major problems," Mito said, frowning. She tapped the droid lightly once and the indicators disappeared from the map before resettling, one at a time, in a loop.

Tobirama's frown deepened as he watched the timelapse move forward, and he knew the others had realized it when Padawan Himawari uncharacteristically cursed.

"As you can see," Mito continued, "there _is_ no five-hour gap. While it is true that the town goes a minimum of five hours without attack, the creatures are appearing for a duration of one hour every three hours. They simply skip the town every other repetition while continuing to appear at the sinkhole."

"So our window's smaller than expected," Ao said grimly.

"True, but it's not the problem I'm concerned with," Tobirama acknowledged as the hologram stopped on the current time's image, revealing a sinkhole so covered in red pins it was practically a solid blackout. "After all, the town is free of Drones because we've been steadily killing them as they appeared. The depression has been under their focus for over four days with no interference."

"Fuckin' shit," the soldier from earlier muttered in the background. Tobirama exchanged a flat look with Mito as the fear and whispers from the civilians spiked in the background. It was extremely unfortunate that they'd had to discuss this out in the open, but the officials had made such a fuss that getting rid of them hadn't been worth the time required to do it. Even Itama, easily the nicest person here, looked a little offended at the lack of faith in them.

Even if it was turning into a small clusterfuck with the multiple complications.

"If we wait longer," Gou Zu said, voice gravelly through his mask, "their numbers simply increase. Do we have the luxury of waiting until the other Jedi arrive, Master Mito, Knight Tobirama?"

Master Mito turned to look at him, head tilted slightly in offer, and Tobirama nodded back before addressing the others.

"Given the staggered arrival times of the reinforcements and how long until the next, I don't believe we should wait. If their rate of growth holds steady, they'll be unmanageable by the last arrival, even at the most optimistic projections. There's also the possibility that they might achieve whatever their goal is at the sinkhole before then and lose interest."

_Which would mean those numbers could be turned against the town_ , Tobirama thought, throwing the words into the Force for his comrades as he signed what he could with the hand partly hidden by his sleeve. _And if they turn those numbers against us in this urban battleground, we've already lost_.

The others indicated their agreement, hiding the unspoken possibility from the surrounding audience.

"What we need to do at this point is look at the available information on the specific area as quickly as possible and formulate a plan of action that will confront the Drones in more manageable numbers. The sinkhole is in desert area rather than the shrublands nearby, which makes for treacherous footing at the best of times."

They all took a moment to pause and assess the situation before Akasuna sighed, eyes closed.

"Deidara," the redhead started, ignoring the hologram, "assume you have immunity for assisting in a Jedi mission on behalf of the public: exactly how many explosives do you have hidden on your ship?"

The blond started with a low, deep laugh that ended in an unsettlingly wide and toothy grin.

"Danna, I _always_ have enough supplies to make my art as big and impactful as I want, un."

.

* * *

.

Impactful was an understatement.

Deidara's bombs did far too much damage for something that managed to get past security. They tore through the masses of Drones one after another in a viciously loud parody of dominos falling in the wake of the man's ship, scattering pieces and bloody chunks of white-green flesh all over the kilometer-wide sinkhole. The uninjured Drones were sent scrambling about, unorganized and divided, which would have been even more of a benefit if their team had been able to approach the sinkhole instead of crouching at a distance and waiting until the concussive blasts stopped.

"Your boy-toy has some nice tricks, Akasuna," Mei Zu commented with a raspy laugh, tilting his goggled head toward the red-head and flicking an orange finger towards the rampant destruction.

Akasuna turned his head slowly towards where the Kel Dor knight was crouching behind their sand dune, and had such a disgusted, flat glare hidden under his impassive expression that you would think Mei Zu had just suggested he fornicate with a Hutt.

The other man broke out laughing.

Gou Zu just hung his head and shook his twin's shoulder reprovingly before grabbing Mei Zu's hood, yanking it up over his orange head, and practically shoving the cackling Knight face first into the sand.

"My apologies, Akasuna," Gou Zu offered, "we've been on assignment in the Outer Rim too long and all his behavioral training's gone to the dogs. He's even forgotten how to roll over and beg."

"That's not what she said," Mei Zu muttered wickedly, making Hagane snort on Tobirama's right.

"Of course it's not," Akasuna agreed evenly, "for 'her' to say anything would require that a woman not avoid your very presence."

"I'm considering drowning them in the sand dune," Tobirama commented to Kamizuki, staunchly ignoring how Mei Zu's attempt to shoot up to his feet in offense was being foiled by his brother's weight pinning him down with an elbow between the shoulderblades.

"Well, you could do that yeah," Kamizuki agreed, shoving brown hair back under his bandanna, "but it looks like the bombs are starting to trail off and there's still an awful lot of those things down there. Might as well keep them around to help until Master Mito can look at the cleared area and fix whatever's wrong."

"Izumo's right," Hagane agreed, wide smile stretching the green tattoo across his face. "Besides, there's a convenient sinkhole right there! You can always shove them into it when we're done."

"Take off your wraps and go fondle some lingerie, you Kiffar bastard. If I go in, I'm dragging you with me," Mei Zu shot back, elbowing his brother off him once more.

"We might all get dragged in at this rate," Akasuna said, frowning towards the settling explosions. "It's hard to feel through the ambient Darkness, but I believe the bombs have destabilized the area further. It feels like the edges of the sinkhole are crumbling inward."

"Alright," Tobirama announced, lightsaber held ready but unlit. "Everyone keep a distance from the pit itself. They don't seem to have issues with the footing and we don't need to give them any advantages if it gives way beneath us. Knights Gou Zu and Mei Zu, Knights Hagane and Kamizuki: you're two teams, and Akasuna will work with me. There's no real advantage for us in cover or approaching unawares, but keep in mind their ability to materialize from the ground. We can't be certain that they only do it on the timed patterns: if this is their real goal, they might call reinforcements."

Tobirama looked at the others, serious to a man now that the fight was about to begin.

"Deidara has said he'll keep airborne and out of range of being attacked, so if we need an escape, we'll have to get to a large enough open spot for him to lower the ship. Blasters only have a forty percent chance of hitting them according to R3-78, but the suppressive fire will let us board if needed.

"Work with your partner, don't get separated, and try to keep an opening at your back in case you need to retreat," he ordered before placing his hands together and bowing.

"May the Force be with us."

"May the Force be with us," the others echoed, bowing back.

And then it began.

.

* * *

.

"Would you look at that, un," Deidara said, whistling lowly at the swift moving Jedi on the display feed. From an aerial view, the easiest thing to see was the neon gleam of the lightsabers leaving afterimages as they blazed through the twilight landscape, cutting apart their opponents in twisting dances across desert sand. Two green, two light blue, one dark blue and a stationary burnt orange being held straight up which had to be Sasori, given the surrounding whirlwind of white-ish bodies being flung through the air without anyone touching them.

"You know, I keep saying that Danna's a work of art himself, and he still doesn't get it. But look at this: he's like a human storm. A motionless, blazing center surrounded by absolute chaos and unpredictability. There with no warning and gone with no sign it happened but the wreckage left behind. Just a brief instance of skill and power which can never really be captured for future generations. Truly a transitory masterpiece. And so ironic given that Danna thinks anything that doesn't last has no value as art, un."

"How illuminating, Mr. Deidara," Master Mito's voice said over the comms, voice as dry as the planet Dac was wet. "Perhaps you could focus on describing what's occurring for those of us without ring-side seats?"

"Is your snazzy satellite footage not doing the job, un?" he asked, flipping some switches and gently raising the ship just enough to get all six fighters back in view.

"There have been _complications_ ," she said pleasantly.

Deidara shivered slightly at her voice, chill racing down his spine. Jedi Mito definitely reminded him of a polite version of that female mandalorian mercenary he'd met in a bar once.

"Well, so far I've made an entrance and dealt with most of them from the air. Your fellow Jedi seem slightly jealous, though, because they're hard at work to even out the kill count. No sign that _I_ can see that they're popping up more of the weeds around, but the sinkhole got wider under the stress, un."

"Hmm... any sign of potential causes, yet?" she asked.

Deidara laughed, leaning back in his seat and spreading his hands for his distant audience. "And exactly how am I to know that? I wasn't ever trained as a Jedi, thankfully. If you want the mystical stuff accounted for, I can swoop down and grab that white haired mansicle. Or Danna instead: he's good at figuring out how strings are being pulled unseen, un."

"The battle is still being fought, is it not?"

"Yeah, it's... what the?"

"What is it?" the Jedi asked authoritatively.

Deidara blinked at the screen, zooming in a bit further and yeah... "They're moving, un."

"Towards the town?" came the grim question.

"No, they're just moving away from the sinkhole. Like rats abandoning a ship, un," he corrected, frowning at the sight. Several of the things even ran _towards_ the Jedi at times just to get slain, but all of them were suddenly crawling out of or fleeing away from the crater.

"I don't know, Master Mito," Deidara said suspiciously, impulsively hitting the speed to thrust the ship up higher and to the side away from the recessed ground. "I have a bad feeling about this, un."

.

* * *

.

Tobirama shot left, intercepted the path of a Drone to cut off its escape, promptly beheaded it, dropped to the ground, kicked _backwards_ into another to land on top of it where he shattered its skull with a reinforced elbow, and rolled back upright.

Seven others had managed to flee past him in those few seconds.

Akasuna caught all the ones in his range and flung them back in front of Tobirama at breakneck speed before scrambling for yet another batch going around them both.

"They've stopped focusing on us," the telekinetic murmured, eyes at half mast and moving rapidly to track their opponents. The Knight had been extremely effective as long-distance support earlier while Tobirama had flowed around him, but the change in the Drone's behavior was making the situation untenable.

"OI!" Hagane bellowed from a quarter distance around the sinkhole, as he and Kamizuki continued weaving in and out of the fleeing forces. "What's the plan now?"

"Focus on getting between them and the town!" he commanded. "The other directions have no settlements nearby!"

A sweeping whirr of a lightsaber through air made him jump backwards so he could catch Akasuna in his periphery while heading off another Drone. The man was fine, but he must have finally been growing weary, as he'd lowered his lightsaber from the focus stance clasp in front of his chest in favor of stabbing forward sharply like a scorpion's tail.

"I dislike it when something flees with no apparent cause," Akasuna said flatly. "It has yet to turn out well."

Tobirama hummed in agreement. "We need to move further back to match where the others are heading. We can catch more running in that direction and then hunt the others down once the main threat to the town is finished."

The other nodded, and then they both staggered as the world rocked beneath them.

It was like being suddenly caught in some horrific blend of earthquake and whirlpool. The earth rocked and bucked, and there were deep snapping sounds ringing through the air along with the sucking, grated roar of sand flowing past them at high speed into the sinkhole.

Then a geyser - an _actual_ geyser of _sand_ instead of water - shot out from the center of the hole, cleared their heads by several dozen meters and crashed back down around the edges. Thank the Force it hadn't hit them directly with that much weight, because simply being caught in it several meters away was like being trapped in a riptide: the ground under their feet pulled forward towards the hole and the sand at their knees was wrenching them backwards.

Jedi Knights, and it was all they could do to just keep their footing. He couldn't even see the other four anymore with so much dust and particles in the air under this madness. He could vaguely feel them, but it was hard enough just to keep track of Akasuna's presence behind him in the Force.

"The sand!" the other man choked out. "The Dar- the Darkness is permeating _all_ of it!"

" _Move_!" he roared out over the bombardment of sound. "Get further away!"

Tobirama stored his lightsaber in his robes quickly, heart thudding and ears ringing as he tried getting to higher ground. But as soon as he got his left foot free and tried to brace himself on the sand, something shot out and _grabbed_ him.

Fear hit instinctively and Tobirama shoved it down even as more of the ground seemed to sink out from beneath him specifically. He grit his teeth and scrambled with both hands to catch hold of something solid, but he kept sliding with nothing around to brace himself on.

A tendril of _something_ wound up his left leg, too deliberate and too condensed to just be his brain playing tricks with the sand. His breathing ratcheted up despite his control, and the relief that hit when Akasuna's hand shot out to grab his right wrist was incredible.

The red-head's eyes were squinted shut against debris and his whole body was braced on the ground, both to spread his weight and because, Tobirama realized as his eyes widened, he had fallen so deeply into the pit of sand that Akasuna _hadn't been able to reach him_ without hitting the ground.

Another tendril creeped further up his right leg and he let go with his left hand, clenching tightly onto Akasuna's wrist as he reached for his lightsaber and ignited it again. A careful slash through them proved futile, however, because there was nothing in the wretched things _but_ sand and it just reformed!

He cursed, shoving his weapon away and lashing out with his rudimentary telekinesis while he tried climbing again. Akasuna was having infinitely more luck using his ability to brace himself against the unsteady ground and get traction to pull while not sinking, but the man's strength lay in detail work and worn down like he already was...

_He's not going to last_ , Tobirama realized, stomach sinking even as he struggled relentlessly towards the surface and away from this Dark, sapient sand. _It's not focused on him, but he's going to run himself dry before he can get himself out of this sucking whirlpool_.

For a moment, it was as if the entire world slowed down for him. The surging sand, the grasping tendrils, the Darkness below and around them and the sticky, deeper Darkness of the fleeing Drones all muted down under the sound of his heartbeat racing in his ears and the sweaty warmth of Akasuna's wrist under his fingers.

He took a slow, steadying breath as nerves fell away under his decision and he released all the fear and lingering anger into the Force.

_It has been an honor to grow and live alongside you, Hashirama, my friends_ , he thought, having faith that the Force would carry his message somehow.

Tobirama looked back up at Akasuna, calm written onto his face and settled in his red eyes despite the constricting sand clutching higher around his waist and chest.

"I'm sorry, Sasori," he said.

Then he broke Akasuna's wrist bones and went under.


	2. Red Pill or Blue Pill?

Lucid dreaming might have been the most worthless piece of shit Madara had ever wasted time learning.

He sighed in frustration, carding a hand through his hair and glaring at the useless scenery. The dream shifted, morphing unevenly from burning fields of molten rock and burbling lava bubbles into ugly, muddy plains beset upon by a vicious, howling tornado which roared and rampaged and didn't so much as flutter his hair.

Madara resolutely plugged his ears against the bellowing noise and looked around in the vague hope something identifiable would appear. What was the Sith-damned point of dream visions if they were  _ useless _ ! At this point, the only thing following Mikoto's advice had done was make sure he was  _ even better _ at remembering how frustrating it all was when he woke up!

And the Sharingan was worse than useless here: it was actively unhelpful! Regardless of Izuna's argument that the Sharingan couldn't be used during dreams anyway, reflexively trying to activate his eyes two months ago had left Madara looking at a psychedelic  _ mess _ . It had merged all the elements of the dream sequence together into one scene, slammed more noise, color, sound, and Force impressions into Madara's brain than anyone could possibly cope with, and had resulted in him lunging awake to go vomit.

There was something torturously unfair about spending three days feeling like you had a massive concussion when you didn't even have the excuse of being in a fight to explain it.

"Ah, yes," Madara drawled, expression flat as the scene bled out, colors whirling together like water down a drain. "Here we have our scheduled switch from Tornado Planet to the Pitch Black Planet of Giant Trees."

It was... pretty much precisely as he'd named it. It was a moist world filled with enormous trees multiple times larger than anything he'd encountered before, which might have been an identifying mark by itself except for the fact that he only knew they were there because he'd  _ walked into a trunk several dozen dreams ago _ !

There wasn't a single speck of light in this wretched place! He literally could not see the hand in front of his face. And identifying plant life by touch wasn't something Madara could do.  _ Sight _ was the hereditary strength of the Uchiha. Tree bark just felt like bark to Madara unless it was covered in moss which made it  _ moss-covered bark _ and possibly dangerous. Because if there was one thing Madara trusted his Force-damned luck for, it was to help him find the single colony of parasitic or poisonous moss in an otherwise harmless acre of forest.

Let the Fanged God forbid that the dream stalled in this scene again though. That had happened more than a few times, and it had given Madara several reasons to desperately take back all of his complaints about wanting light in favor of being really,  _ fucking _ specific about wishing for  _ sunlight _ . Bioluminescent skittering creatures that set off every danger sense Madara had developed during his decades of doing dangerous shit were not the kind of light he wanted! Especially when they proceeded to hunt him down over several kilometers for what felt like hours.  _ Even more so _ when he got the distinct impression they were intelligent enough that it was no accident that he was herded towards other things that tried to kill him.

All of which happened in an environment void of light.

It was more than a little nerve wracking.

In fact, Mikoto still hadn't forgiven him for burning her hardwood floor with Force Lightning during his overreaction to a stick insect last month. Hell, the only reason he wasn't being periodically harassed with humiliating reminders of it from Fugaku and Izuna was because Mikoto was both nice enough to tell he had genuinely freaked out and mean enough that she didn't want to share the blackmail.

"Why are all the people I love assholes?" he asked out loud, futilely side-eyeing the black nothingness to his left when something unseen skittered over moist ground.

/ _ Well, if all the people you know are assholes, that leaves you as the one commonality among them./ _

"And you're just the nicest sentient this side of the Core, aren't you?" Madara shot back, muscles unwinding as the half-felt presence settled at his back, unseen.

The dream always started loosing clarity here as it moved past the Dark Forest. The person at his back - humanoid and  _ maybe _ male, Madara had guessed before - had become more solid over the last few weeks even as the vision itself branched out and included more clouded elements: a silent firefight, the shadowed console of his ship's nav computer, an old building falling to ruins and  _ reeking _ with the feel of death, fear, and bewildered confusion...

It was comforting to have someone at his back through it all. Even if the closest he'd come to seeing them was a foggy image of a hooded figure carefully looking through ancient books ( _ actual books! _ ) while Madara paced between shelves in a misty, transparent archive.

/ _ Relax, Madara _ ,/ he heard, as a high pitched buzz sliced through the air behind him and something inhuman screamed before it thudded to the ground. / _ We will find it, and we will fix things. There is always a path forward to the future. We simply haven't found it yet. _ /

"Is that another thing they taught you?" he asked, mouth moving without thought as he pressed against a muscled back when the ground shifted into a manmade path suspended over countless kilometers of open air. "I bet you got an A+ in fortune cookie comfort," he added.

A muted sound of frustration made Madara smirk.

/ _ I don't know what those are, but rest assured, I am positive you're being an ass. Don't buy those, you fool, they're poisonous./ _

"They're  _ orange _ , not green: they're..." Madara trailed off, realizing that he had sunk further into the vision and forgotten it was a dream, once again. "What are we doing? Who are you? Do you know—"

/ _ Waiting. _ / a voice said, impatient as the scent of refiltered air wafted through. A red, ominous glow started to lurk behind Madara, and a large presence weighed down upon them both. It felt as if they were being watched.

"Yes, but  _ why! _ " he demanded. "What do we need to do? Can you help? It's possible, right? That's what you're implying?!"

/ _ Make sure you're not late. If you're late, it's all useless./ _

Heat radiated from above and a fierce wind blasted sand in his face making Madara flinch. He whirled around to grab at the other when he felt movement, but—

** _ dun,dun,dun, daaah-dadun, daaah-dun! _ **

Madara shot awake at the sound of brass instruments blaring  _ right next to his ear _ . He flailed on the edge of his bed, trying desperately to grab hold of the fitted sheets, but gravity won out and he crashed to the floor in a heap of tangled cloth and fuming embarrassment.

" _ Bumbles! _ " he snarled.

A series of sing-song, happy sounds beeped back at him in Binary before the droid went right on blasting that kriffing March at full volume.

"I will  _ end _ you, Bumbles," he said, waving his left arm at it with a threatening finger as he crained his neck backwards. "I will Force Punch you into a wall, render you down to your component parts, and donate what's left of you to the Clan's school for kids to practice on, do you hear me? Bumbles? Bumbles!  _ BB-03! _ " he yelled.

The shitty astromech rolled to a stop next to where his black hair had been splayed out across the floor and gave a long sad beep towards his upside-down face as the racket trailed into silence. Bumbles reached out a small manipulator arm, picked up a tangled chunk of his hair, and carefully dropped it back down on his shoulder rather than the floor. Then it perked up and essentially went to attention: little antenna standing straight up and all the yellow circles on its black body rolled  _ just right _ so that it looked perfectly symmetrical.

Madara, left shoulder aching and right leg still tangled in the sheets, just started drumming his fingers on the floor.

" _ That, _ " he growled, "does not fix this."

Bumbles seemed to droop, but Madara just swiped his outstretched arm at its head. It rolled out of the way, turned its sensor back onto his prone body, gave a considering beep, and then promptly clicked its holocamera before proceeding to roll around excitedly while beeping the droid equivalent of laughing its head off.

"You do not have a single line of shame in any part of your programming," he complained, lifting his head up just to thud it back onto the floor. "I  _ told _ you to stop listening to Izuna's ideas! They aren't funny!"

Bumbles stopped and let out a deep  _ brrrrrr _ as it shook its head rapidly.

"No," Madara said slowly, "no, they are  _ not _ . I will reprogram your ass and throw Izuna into the Waterfall hog-tied if this happens again,  _ just watch me _ ."

A loud, abrupt  _ snnnt _ was the unimpressed droid's response.

Madara groaned, rolling over and dragging the rest of the sheets off the bed to cocoon himself in a lump on the floor. "What do you even want?" he bitched, trying in vain to convince his body that the metal floor under his cheek really was a perfectly acceptable place to sleep even if it was subpar to the bed. His brain was having none of it though, regardless of how much his body desperately wanted more sleep. It was even more tantalizing given that he might get  _ actual sleep _ now since he'd already had the vision once tonight.

Alas, adrenalin and noisy droids were conspiring against him.

A few chipper beeps later and Madara shot a hand out from the blankets to throw his pillow at the wretched thing.

"I told you to  _ wait until _ I woke up once we got there! Not  _ wake me up _ once we got there, you future ball of scrap metal! You knew exactly what I meant! Name one skrogging example of a time when I enjoyed getting woken up early!"

Bumbles sounded a smooth up-down pitch, and Madara didn't even have to extract his head to know the little shit had rolled its body back and forth suggestively.

"Just  _ get out _ you irritating, voyeuristic malfunction!" he hissed desperately. "Go move the ship onto the Rimma Trade Route so the Eriaduans don't wonder if we've broken down or something!"

Bumbles flipped out its welding torch in a vertical position before happily wheeling away. Madara had never been able to confirm for absolute certainty what that gesture was meant to be. It could be either its attempt to act cute and give a thumbs up, or (as Madara privately suspected) it was the droid's version of a cheerful way to flip him off. There hadn't been sufficient evidence in support for either theory, but Madara refused to ask for two reasons:

One: it would mean admitting to Bumbles that he couldn't decipher it 100% of the time, which was an  _ absolute _ disaster in the making.

And two: if Bumbles really hadn't considered flipping him off yet,  _ Madara wasn't giving the little shit the idea _ .

"I should just rename it 'Little Shit'," Madara said, sighing as he crooked a beckoning finger and made his pillow float back over to him. Of course, that was a terrible idea. If he did do it, then the next time he went back to the Clan he would call Bumbles that out loud without thinking, and he would instantly offend all the parents nearby. Even Fugaku would give him the Scowl of Disapproval, which was just bullshit given that Fugaku's youngest was out in the galaxy somewhere looking "to make something of himself" since he had run away at  _ age ten _ like the dramatic brat he undoubtedly still was, and...

Well, the point was that Madara was clearly far from the worst influence in life because he had very little to do with the weird messes that he called nephews.

Grabbing the pillow once it was in reach, he flopped over on his back and shoved it under his head. The ceiling was boring to look at, but not enough to lull him back to sleep despite his body screaming for it. Bumbles' little stunt had woken him up barely a few hours into his planned sleep cycle, which was actually a little weird since the dream hadn't been cut short abnormally.

But then again, the more esoteric and less testable something was in the Force, the more of a pain in the ass it tended to be. Mostly because the Clan couldn't document things easily when they were subjective or just manifested less often. No past references: no information to draw on. Which meant he had to go through the additional trouble of documenting everything and sending it back home to be added to the archives. At least Fugaku was amiable towards Madara's order that everything be sealed until this was resolved somehow. The last thing he wanted to put up with was curious relatives creating theories on what was happening and volunteering them to him every five minutes.

_ If only we had better resources _ , Madara thought, bitterly wistful as he remembered old stories about the Jedi and all the evidence he'd found to suggest there was truth to the stories.  _ It's not like they would have willingly divulged anything to those who don't follow their ways, but at least it would have been  _ there _. Outlasting a librarian's stubbornness is far easier than assembling random information and hoping it's correct. _

He quietly groaned at that thought, rubbing both hands down his face.

Mistakes.  _ Gods _ , he hated mistakes in data gathering. There was no immediate way to tell which part was wrong. The last time he'd found contradicting historical info on Alderaan, it had taken him three more months of searching to figure out whether it was the Alderaan documents or the ones from Naboo which were correct. Infuriatingly, it was the ones from Naboo which correctly coincided with their obituaries which... ok, it was nice to know the Naboo stuff was hopefully unaltered, but it meant that someone in the past had fucked around on Alderaan. Either there had been cover ups or someone had managed publicity or it was part of that irrational lashout response in the early decades... who knew.

"So tiring," he bitched to himself, glaring at nothing. All these years, several  _ decades _ at this point, and he still didn't have solid information on the hows, whys, or  _ whos _ despite all the information he'd gathered and parsed. If there even was a 'who' behind it in the first place. He had terabytes and  _ holobooks _ worth of information supporting solid theories on what was going on and tentatively where and when things started, and still none of that gave him a plan on how to move forward.

_ Nothing about how to fix it _ , he thought, face falling blank as he raised his left hand and blindly stared at the faded scars scattered across his palm from that Ilum crystal splintering.  _ I don't have... I don't have any way to fix it. There's still no way to  _ do  _ anything about it all. I just... _

Madara shakily breathed in and out, grinding the heel of his palms against his burning eyes. The Force around him felt thick and shadowed like a heavy soaked blanket, and his weak attempts to calm down and let go just reflected his own misery back at him.

_ Maybe I should go home for a break _ , he considered, rolling onto his side again.  _ It's been a long while since I've been back. I could use the sense of peace and connection even if it's frustrating to feel like I've stopped again. _

"We'll stop after this," he muttered, drawing on the comfort of an unknown figure at his back to smooth out the Force around him and steady his breathing. "We'll check out this one last oddity and then go back home. Regroup, restock," he yawned, "figure out another place to check. Get some fresh eyes to look it over maybe."

/ _ Relax, Madara. We will find it, and we will fix things./ _

With any luck, they're right, Madara thought, remembering that impression of steely certainty and confidence. If the Winged Goddess blesses him and the Fanged One chooses to overlook him or even guide him through this morass they're all caught in... maybe he really  _ could  _ fulfill his vow.

Of course, at that moment the ships intercom activated with a metallic screech that it hadn't had yesterday and started to play that  _ karking March _ again!

He might end up needing to do all this without his droid, because  _ he was going to kill Bumbles! _

.

* * *

 

.

Madara stormed into the cockpit, boots clicking against the floor as he shoved his left arm into his white, hooded long-coat. He hadn't quite decided on how precisely he wanted to do away with the irritating menace yet since getting dressed hadn't provided enough time to sort through the  _ many, many _ options that sounded appealing right now.

He supposed he could always just start alphabetically, wait for its memory to reupload to one of the backup bodies, and then do the next method on the list, but that sounded like an awful lot of money and travel time involved in the long run. It also sounded like a bad precedent to start for someone with a short temper like himself, but Madara wasn't a hundred percent positive that he actually cared about that right now.

The small thermos full of fresh caf waiting on his seat stopped him dead.

Madara stared at it for a few seconds, picked it up, and sat down in the seat as he side-eyed Bumbles threateningly. The droid flickered the shutters on its sensor cutely for a few microseconds and beeped encouragingly, completely unbothered by the familiar sight of red seeping into Madara's irises. He opened the container, still narrowed-eyed, and took a small sip of the perfectly hot beverage.

He swallowed.

"You," he pointed, "you get to live  _ one _ more day, you hear me?"

Bumbles beeped happily and smartly refrained from bringing up the current count of how many times Madara had said that. It wasn't that Madara didn't mean it when he said he'd kill the droid. He was absolutely a man of his word and he was not a weak-spined sentient that made idle threats and... and...

"Oh, fuck it," he grumbled, slumping down into his chair and drinking more caf.

Once he had finished off his first thermos and grabbed the second one Bumbles had prepared, the droid started making its report. Apparently there had been a crash in the Rimma Trade Route just an hour ago, and the Eriadu was broadcasting a high priority message to all ships that dropped out of hyperspace as a result. The first responders had already confirmed that it was caused by an asteroid moving into the route, which was frankly suspicious given the absolute dearth of asteroids or celestial bodies nearby the crash site.

"You could have just gone ahead and updated the nav computer without waking me up," Madara said, looking over the readings on his datapad. Bumbles had taken the liberty of checking for  _ all _ available astronavigation updates rather than just the pertinent one nearby, so at least they could scratch that off the list for this week.

A few modest beeps and Madara snorted softly.

"You pick the most ridiculous times to refrain from initiative. You hardly have trouble presuming on a host of other topics, and it's not like you actually waited before updating today."

Madara stretched out, yawning as he popped a few vertebrae and loosened up his shoulders. His hair was still a knotted mess, but at least they weren't likely to need to communicate with the vid screen very soon. And hell, if he shoved the mass through a hair tie twice to make a loose bun then it sorta looked more 'on purpose' and less 'electrified hedgehog'.

"We're running low on a few essentials," he added on, flipping through the screens to the inventory list. "Doesn't look like anything vital for the next week or so, but after that I might have to start resorting to the ration bars."

Bumbles theatrically fell sideways.

" _ Precisely _ . Let's avoid that. They're healthy, but that's all they have going for them, and I've already eaten more of them in one lifetime than any being should have to suffer through. Fuel looks ok, money looks ok, no emergency updates needed, no emergency repairs needed... Let's go ahead and schedule the secondary updates for when we're next planetside somewhere with a strong subspace network. Holonet access would be faster if you can get it without breaking laws for a reasonable price, but I don't think anything on here is specialized enough that a regional network wouldn't have it anyway. Also, keep an eye on the minor repair areas on our to-do list. Go ahead and triage them for potential severity, and then look up the areas that have those parts for cheapest. We'll hit them as they become available if they're nearby."

Bumbles acknowledged it and trilled questioningly.

"No, we're not stopping on Eriadu. One: I hate this planet. Two: I hate these people. Three: foodstuffs are one of their major imports. It'll be cheaper to stop somewhere else to purchase things later. If nothing else, we can always pick a planet and I'll hunt something down.  _ Don't even, _ " he said, shoving a chunk of hair back as he glared preemptively at the astromech.

It just tilted its head and beeped back in Binary.

"Sure you were," he replied. "Anything else we needed to go over before the jump?"

Lights flickered on Bumbles' head, and it projected a transparent blue hologram of the nearby galaxy into the air.

"Again?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at the mech even as he reached into a nearby compartment. A low metallic croon and Madara shook a dismissive hand. "No, it's fine, knock it off. It's not like our destination doesn't impact you, and it  _ is _ a bit weird this time."

He shook out the old piece of paper he'd acquired on some low-tech planet years ago and held it in front of his face before closing his eyes.

"Alright, go for it."

Bumbles beeped, and he could hear the droid's repulsorlift kick in as it hovered around and moved a bit so he couldn't know the map's exact position. When he heard its metal body click back to the floor and Bumbles beeped, Madara opened newly red eyes.

The paper blocked the passage of light, but it had no effect on the Sharingan's ability to see Force currents through most objects. In space, it tended to appear as a steady backdrop with currents, eddies, and hundreds of nuances depending on how he focused and what he was searching for. Truly, in some ways, it was much simpler to just feel the Force and passively let his instinct interpret it rather than looking at it and trying to decipher its flows.

But for  _ accuracy _ , using both was far superior.

Madara reached for the back of his holopad, still watching the Force as he unclipped the pad's stylus. While the hologram of the map had no impact on the Force itself since it was only insubstantial light, the fact that he was focusing on their next destination made the Force reactive to his own potential futures. Several swirls of interest, several chaotic bubbles of potential trouble, and...  _ there. _

He tossed the stylus like a dart right through the spot where the Force was splintered like glass that had shattered on the ground and been reglued in place. He'd never seen anything quite like it when mapping before, but simply focusing on that place made the rest of the Force currents on the map shift completely. It all wriggled and shivered like its foundations were unsteady. So even though Madara  _ knew _ there would be trouble if they went there just as well as he knew his own name...

He'd seen very few Force points with that sort of implied effect. Risky or not, they had to head there.

Bumbles  _ hmmmm _ ambivalently while Madara lowered the paper and they both looked at the blinking dot on the droid's map.

"Looks like we're still heading to Utapau then."

.

* * *

 

.

Bumbles shrieked indignantly and rolled forward to ram the starport official's legs while beeping shrilly.

"The short translation of that is 'bullshit' if you didn't catch it all," Madara said, eyes narrowed as he caught Bumbles with the Force and hauled it back to his side. "Now try again because the port fees sure as hell didn't cost that much when I checked your Net."

The taller Pau'an took a quick glance at the droid Madara still had a hold of and narrowed its red-socketed eyes down at him. Madara flashed the Sharingan right back at the sentient and caught a flash of muted surprise in the Force even though the male's expression didn't change at all. Lined gray skin shifted as he gave Madara what was probably meant to be a smile and turned back to the holopad in his hands.

Madara could still feel the general impression of 'insolent child' coming from the Pau'an, but at least he'd thrown the male off of imminent dislike and into grudging annoyance. There was a benefit to being able to knock people off balance when they first assume you're human. Humans, after all, don't always have the best track record with species outside human norm so not being one is better at times. And leaving someone uncertain of what you are also means they can't just latch onto stereotypes and paste them over how they see you.

Not always the best option to take, but bad reactions were what his electrostaff and blaster were for.

"The figures listed on Pau City's website are out of date and haven't been properly updated since the last offworlder came through. What I quoted you is indeed the current fee in Galactic Credits," the official said.

"That's ridiculous," he argued, gently kicking Bumbles with the side of his boot when it started forward again. "There's nothing that implies an economic collapse in the last few weeks, and this is  _ barely _ a limited service level spaceport rather than an empty field! Even if the  _ Red Merlin _ qualifies as a small passenger transport rather than a cargo transport, it shouldn't be half that high."

"Be that as it may," Offical Tion Me'omg said, flicking the backs of his fingers on the pad, "the fee is what it is. Given the site's false display, I can make an adjustment between the two numbers, but I cannot honor such a low rate in credits right now."

"In  _ credits _ ?" Madara asked, catching that unconscious emphasis. "What about wupiupi? Or druggats?"

Me'omg paused, eyes slowly fastening on Madara despite how his head stayed turned-down.

"That's the problem, isn't it?" he asked, already feeling a solid confirmation of his hunch. "Something happened and it ricocheted and dropped the exchange rate between currencies in the Outer Rim systems again. Forget converting the fee into Republic creds. What's the original fee in the different currencies you take?"

Me'omg was about to answer, body language shifting as he straightened, when a burst overhead caught their attention.

They were on the west side of Pau City's colossal sinkhole, and with this space dock's placement on the border of the second layer down, it didn't take too much effort to look up at the sky over the rocky eastern wall.

Visually, the thing, whatever it was, was very impressive. It split open the sky with red crackles of lightning that raged across the horizon. It spat out black wisps of light like charred mist and forks of orange which seared across the blue sky, leaving afterimages. It was as if someone had taken a massive storm, stripped it of everything liquid, and trapped it on the ground so it could only rage upward at the skies.

In the Force... in the Force it was  _ massive, _ like nothing Madara had ever experienced.

With no warning, no hint beforehand, it was suddenly  _ there _ . A black hole of power sucking in, an implosion of supernovas raging outward, it was  _ power _ . It was planetfulls of power condensed, burning, and flaringly chaotic as it bucked and writhed across the surface to the east. It metaphysically slammed into everything around it with the force of an asteroid crashing, and Madara buckled and staggered into Bumbles at the sudden pressure.

The sudden absence of it felt like losing gravity.

Madara braced himself against one of his ship's landing struts, hand buried in his hair as he put pressure against his throbbing temple, and gingerly flexed his mental shields while popping his ears. Bumbles made a lost whine and pressed against his leg while Official Me'omg stared at the now empty sky. The Pau'an moved his head away with the slow, jerky unawareness of a Force-blind being who'd been hit  _ hard _ with a mental effect and didn't recognize it.

"We were... speaking of the, the fees in... wupiupi, yes?" the male started, staring blankly at his pad.

Madara opened his mouth, considered the burgeoning confusion and blankness surging in the Force around the city, and abruptly reconsidered.

"What are the local laws concerning speeder bikes?" he asked, spinning towards the  _ Merlin _ 's open entry ramp and walking past it to the lowering cargo lift he'd just triggered. Another tug of Force had his speeder sliding over in the ship with a screech to drop down through the opening. Madara winced at the thud his poor bike made landing on the lift, but his brain felt almost half-numb from overstimulation and apparently that translated to an abrupt decrease in finesse.

"Bikes?" the official asked, slowly regaining awareness even as Bumbles started beeping shrilly at the sight of the bike. "They aren't, aren't commonly utilized on Utapau. The varactyls and dactillions are the primary form of transport in city."

_ In short, don't get caught just in case _ , Madara thought, prepping the bike and ensuring the bike compartment was locked.

"Bumbles!" he snapped, silencing the droid objections. "Sort out the payment with the port and then stick with the ship just in case. I'm going to check it out."

He boarded the bike, shoved on gloves and got the helmet in place with the comm on just in time to hear Bumbles resume its emphatic complaints about his life choices and sense of preservation.

"What precisely do you think you're doing?!" Tion Me'omg objected as he inconveniently chose right then to snap back to normal.

"My astromech, BB-03, has access to our funds and negotiation rights. It'll handle payment while I'm gone," he said, powering up the bike.

"That's a Keluda F-29 Swoop!" Me'omg objected, surprisingly. "It's not designed to maintain flight higher than several kilometers without forward momentum! You can't use it at speed within the sinkhole without crashing!"

"Maybe  _ you _ can't," he said with a derisive snort. A flick of a switch and the bike rose. He gave Bumbles a look and got a resigned salute back from its arm.

Ignoring the blaring feel of  _ crazy near-human! _ coming from the Pau'an, he shot forward off the landing pad. Twisting once he cleared the overhang, he swung the bike into a barrel roll in order to ascend vertically along the rock wall. Clinging to the bike with more strength than fully natural, he ramped the speed up for a few precious seconds before twisting sideways. He angled along the sinkhole's walls while the swoop warmed up, and as soon as he hit the minimum speed requirement, he shot across the open bowl of the city.

One twist to dodge, one turn away from the setting sun, and one upside-down corkscrew later, and Madara was out of Pau City and heading east.

.

* * *

 

.

Tobirama had expected to die in the sands.

From the moment he had let go of Akasuna, he had thought it would be the end of him. A single cubic meter of sand weighed over a ton, and there was far more sand than that in this Darkened death trap. Regardless of their power, Jedis have always been more mortal than rumor makes them, and Tobirama was no exception.

Except... that's not quite what happened.

He did go under. He was dragged down by that implacable tendril into the sand as it shifted around him. Instinct made him hold his breath and close his eyes against the coarse grains, hindbrain screaming for just one more moment of life. But instead of the sand and Darkness compressing down on him until he ruptured like a rat caught in a trash compactor, it... opened.

Even years later he would never fully find a way to describe what happened next.

The Darkness in the sand blazed into power like an inverse star, horrendously and paradoxically  _ bright _ in his senses and through his eyelids. And as it shifted, he was no longer being dragged down so much as freefalling through an intangible nothingness. The Force sparked and buffeted around him while the sand guided rather than dragged.

Gravity was a forgotten idea. There was no air, but no suffocation. A sense of falling but no movement. It was enough to panic the most serene Master had they been there, and Tobirama clamped down on his composure with grim resolution.

Suddenly, with a cradling shove of rough sand, there was direction again as he went tumbling through the not-space. The warmth of fire, the chill of death, and through a dizzying fog he fell until he crashed into a turbulent ocean of rough waves.

It sucked him down in a whirlpool of pressured water without wetness. The Darkness was stronger and different: less blatant, less challenging, but larger, deeper... a sense of enclosing envelopment lurking in the distance and watching.

He shot out the bottom of the sucking pressure and  _ screamed _ as reality melted around him.

A sickening sunfire of heat burned away all sense of his body in its inferno as he just tried holding his presence together. The boiling updraft of steam which buffeted him skyward was positively blessed in comparison no matter how smothering the indomitable presence in the Force became.

The sense of air condensed though, becoming thicker and thicker until it was a gelatinous pool around him. It incited a low-level burn everywhere it touched, and he woozily tried to use it to track his body once again as he somehow breathed through the thick sludge sinking down his throat like mud down a drain pipe. He ignored the sense of his stomach rising. Ignored the sphere he was in as it seemed to slide along tracks, going airborne and spinning and reconnecting and shifting like a ride no amusement park could dare to meet. Not without the help of the Darkness that strengthened every stronger around him, radiating a gleeful, defiant freedom as it soared through every ounce of space he knew.

He was barely processing the sense of his fingers flexing when things  _ broke _ .

The soaring Dark screamed without sound, blazing like rebar through his brain as fear and anger and  _ hatred _ tore through him. Cloying, insatiable hunger tugged at the world, tar and insanity reaching forward with insubstantial fingers to consume its winged prey, and as it fell so did he.

He fell. He fell and reality fractured around him and the pain and Dark were nothing compared to the lurking void waiting between the cracks of the world. A void of nothingness and energy and nature made power with no sense of self, no sense of being and which would kill him like space killed any human if the transition didn't rip him apart first.

Inky tentacles of Darkness, solid as duracrete and untouchable as storm clouds, grasped for him. He tried something: reaching for them, rejecting them, even he couldn't tell. Was it better to die in the void? Was it better to be saved by this Dark? He could never succumb to the Dark Side and remain himself, but what did that mean in this place outside all places? This place filled with nothing but warring Darkness as deep and as different as human hearts.

Would his death be defiance or complicity?

He was on the edge of that void when the tentacle slammed into him instead. It hit his ribs and propelled him away from the living tar that was cannibalizing that screaming, winged hatred. He fell into overwhelming redness that seethed of defiant malice as it struck out at him, burning pain,  _ physical _ pain into his body as it roughly caught him.

A sense of teeth larger than temples nested among a red-orange nova.

/  **_Do your duty, Jedi!_ ** /

.

* * *

 

.

Waking up with soft, powdered dirt under his face was almost more surprising than waking up at all.

Tobirama groaned weakly, not bothering to move as he just lay there. The ground was soft and pleasant and oddly warm, and he didn't  _ care _ right now that it smelled faintly of ozone and that there were wisps of Darkness lingering all around him. The world made sense again and there was Light around him gently dispersing the lingering feel of the Dark Side. Even the pounding rawness inside his mind couldn't detract from the soothing peace he found in the Light Side at this moment.

The hazy sense of an approaching Darksider certainly took away from it though.

He opened his eyes. His vision was blurred and doubled, so he was at an immediate disadvantage already if this came down to a fight. The left arm trapped under his body felt fine, if numb, but the shoulder was a hotbed of pain. It felt raw and the ache felt like it reached all the way down to his scapula. Trying to shift off his arm triggered overwhelming agony through his shoulder and back, and Tobirama had to stop and just breathe as he tried to get it under control. With all the damage in his shoulder and spine, he couldn't even tell if anything else was...

Spine.

His breath caught and it was only when he could careful wiggle the toes on both feet (if painfully) that Tobirama breathed out.

_ Alright. The damage is severe and I can't feel parts of it except when I try to move which says nothing good, but at least the spinal cord seems to be intact. And nothing in the Force warns against moving more _ , he thought. He'd just have to trust the Force that he didn't have any damaged vertebrae because he honestly couldn't feel it past everything else. He slowly shifted his weight to the front of his right shoulder, letting up on his arm as he pulled it out from under him, grabbing his lightsaber in his left hand as he moved it to the side.

Settling back down with his lightsaber alongside him and likely hidden under the cloth he felt covering his hand, Tobirama tried to concentrate on the being approaching him.

They were definitely strong. How strong he couldn't say for sure with senses that felt like they'd been blistered. Especially since the figure didn't seem to be projecting at all. He or she might even be hiding most of their power right now if they were trying to approach while being underestimated.

_ Not that it was necessary _ , he considered with a grimace. He was positive that he wouldn't even be able to beat a senior padawan right now. Underestimation and a stealth attack at close range were going to be Tobirama's only options, and he would just have to hope that the Darksider was too arrogant to carry a ranged weapon like a blaster with them.

They didn't feel that Dark though. They felt like a smoldering fire hidden in the forest litter underfoot and waiting to rage, mixed with the cloying thickness of smoke, and the lurking edge of poison hidden in almonds. A sense of explosive potential balanced on knife blades and waiting to tear through obstacles with indifferent fury. Dark, certainly, but not... not as bad as some.

Albeit with his... recent experience, it was possible that Tobirama's standards were incredibly skewed. No rogue Jedi he'd ever met, even in the lowest depths of their insanity, could possible equal the Force he'd felt after sinking under the sand. A Sith might potentially match it, but with their destruction nearly a millenia ago, Tobirama had no references to compare it to.

He doubted it though.

He slipped into a light meditative state, easing his breathing and trying to push what healing energies he had to the worst wound. The fact it gravitated immediately to a wound towards the top of his spine was deeply concerning, but he let that thought go for now. There was nothing he could do about it except focus on what he had the ability to do. His goal wasn't to heal everything —he wouldn't have time for that— but he needed to keep himself from dying until his fellow Jedi could reach him.

If they  _ could _ reach him in time. Nothing about the blurry environment he could see quite resembled what he knew of Samaria.

The sound of a speeder stopping at a slight distance away caught his attention, and Tobirama slit his eyes open again. There was a figure getting off the bike, frustratingly backlit by the setting sun. They wore a long coat of some light color, dark boots, something cylindrical on their back, and a mass of wild hair in a messy tie that tumbled out of their helmet when they took it off.

_ A woman? _ he thought, carefully not tensing as he felt a heavy presence observing him. No... no, he couldn't check with the Force, but something about the stride as they walked forward was off for a female's build in most species.

He closed his eyes as they got closer, waiting until he felt them stop a meter away and crouch down. A brief pause and Tobirama abruptly opened his blurry eyes.

_ Male, light skin, human appearance, black hair, slightly glowing red eyes— _

_ Red _ .

" _ Sith _ ," Tobirama hissed, curse and accusation both, as he lunged upward, blocked the pain as best he could, and went for man's neck with his saber.

Except he dodged. He  _ dodged, _ blast it, as Tobirama's blade came within mere centimeters of his neck.

The man landed in a crouch and with enhanced speed shot to his feet in a spin, reaching behind with his right hand, and punching forward with his left in a burst of pressure. Tobirama leapt sideways to avoid it, hearing the ground thud behind him, but landing sent a shooting agony up his left knee.

_ No, no, no! Not now! _ he thought fiercely as his knee gave out. He tried to compensate, tried to shift, but there was already a black blur coming for his head as he fell.

.

* * *

 

.

With an unpleasant thud of metal on skull, the man dropped.

Madara lowered his electrostaff and stared suspiciously at the white haired man. He seemed to be out cold, but he certainly hadn't been unconscious the first time. Madara considered it briefly, shifted his staff to make sure he had a firm grip, and poked the man roughly in the hollow between his neck and right shoulder.

Nothing happened.

"Well, I suppose you're saf _ er _ now," he muttered, reaching his left hand up to gently rub at the long scar under his right jawline. He winced slightly at the tender hint of a first degree burn. He'd almost gotten a far more lethal addition to that scar today. He knocked the metal grip further away from where it had rolled loose of the man's outstretched hand and circled around him.

The guy stuck out like a sore thumb on Utapau. He was human for one. Probably near-human with those red eyes although Madara vaguely remembered from biology that red was a rare allele or mutation or something even in pure humans, so perhaps human was still on the table. White hair was unusual with his apparent age though. He definitely didn't look like he'd hit mid-years for his life expectancy. Was it a strong force-presence making him look younger than his age but not changing his hair or just another off-norm color?

Because  _ kriff _ was he strong in the Force.

With the surrounding disturbance dying down and the knock to the head apparently disrupting his shields, the man shone strong and solid and  _ brightbrightBRIGHT _ in the Force. It was easily the clearest presence Madara had ever come across outside of the occasional child. Even if there was a sense of danger to him, it didn't feel like imminent danger or a primed grenade. It felt like the bright, sharp gleam of light reflecting off a edged blade. A sword with a sheath for when it wasn't needed.

"I will bet my ship you weren't here before that power storm. What are you even doing here?" he wondered aloud, looking at the two beige tunics, the utility belt, and the dark brown boots. The boots were nice: good quality, worn enough to imply constant use without being overused... not something you went for if you pinched money but an excellent choice for both comfort and safety in case you might need to, oh, fight on an arid landscape, for example.

Madara kind of wanted a black pair for his own use when one of his current pairs wore out.

But if the  _ boots _ weren't why the man went off-balance, maybe it was an injury? He didn't fight like someone used to favoring past damage, so it should be something recent. Except that there weren't any rips or burns in the clothing indicating an accident or blaster fire, and the only hint of red was some spotting in the upper-center of the left half of his back.

... Spotting through two layers of what looked like thick tunics?...

Madara scowled, rubbing the back of his head before sighing and returning the staff to its magnetic clip on his back. He stalked forward, drew a utility knife from his boots after he kneeled next to the man and grabbed the outer tunic.

"Sucks to be you, asshole," he said, slicing through the back of the collar and dragging the knife downward.

Throwing the tunic open had Madara cursing like mad and grabbing the comm stored in his inner jacket's pocket.

"Bumbles!" he called, looking at the wide blotches of blood soaked through the inner tunic. "Get on the home database and find me somewhere nearby that knows how to treat possible humans beyond shoving bacta on it and hoping for the best. And get the ship over here now while you're at it!"

An alarmed series of beeps greeted him over the sound of rolling metal while Madara tried to decide if it was more or less risky to pry the fabric up to see what was going on.

"No, I'm fine! It's someone else," he answered, carefully sliding his awareness between flesh and cloth to check for problems while his hands slowly pried the fabric up. Luckily nothing seemed to have dried enough to adhere to cloth yet. Or not luckily because that meant it hadn't slowed yet. "There's a large bleed somewhere on his back close to the spine. He fought so no nerve damage I think, but his knee gave out so there's something there too."

He manipulated the knife to cut through while his hands held the fabric steady and winced at the sight once the tunic was out of the way.

The man's back looked like charred meat in most places. There were long strips of damage over his entire torso with a few overlapping at the top left to leave his shoulder almost entirely raw or blackened. Most of it looked cauterized, but the base of the neck where the spine protruded outward had cracked open in the center of the burn along with several other places that were bleeding freely.

_ And here are several reasons why you shouldn't have tried to kill me _ , he thought, careful not to say it aloud for Bumbles to hear or he'd never get the droid to play nice.

An indifferent question as the ship powered up in the background had Madara rolling his eyes.

"No,  _ I _ didn't fight him,  _ I _ didn't cause the wounds, and we're not just leaving him here. I want answers and it's harder getting them from dead men. I think he'll need a bacta tank immersion though. He's got at least fifty percent of his back covered in burns and who knows elsewhere... Shit, those are damn expensive to set up. Does Utapau even have one on planet? One we could access?" he asked, striding towards the bike where he threw open the compartment and grabbed the minimal first-aid kit he stored there.

Bumbles  _ hnnnnned _ skeptically, ship humming in the background.

"Great," he muttered, scowling as he hit the ground, setting the kit aside as he ripped open one of the bacta patches. Looking at the excess blood welling around the wound had him gritting his teeth before grabbing a sterilized piece of gauze.

"Sucks to be you, buddy," he said, and wiped blood away from the spinal gash. The man jerked reflexively, but Madara ruthlessly ignored it as he set the bacta patch in place over the gash. The man would just have to deal with the adhesive resting on the burns because it was too large to do anything but triage it right now.

Rinse and repeat took care of the other open wounds on his back, but left him fresh out of bacta in the kit. He scanned the rest of the man and it looked like it was only the knee that had blood on the nearby fabric. Not surprising, given how much the skin flexes there during movement. It would have broken open if he had burns there too.

A quick grab for some rubber tubing in the kit and he at least had a tourniquet on the man's upper thigh. If the Force was with them at all for once instead of nailing this guy like the walking target he felt like, they'd manage to get him somewhere before he died of either blood loss or shock.

Madara laid the cloth back over the man's back to keep him from being chilled by the strengthening winds, and frowned at his bloody hands. He really wanted to run one through his hair, but the sterilization wipes were the only thing available and there were best saved for later. A pity this damn rock had practically no surface water because that would actually be useful.

"You got anything?" he asked.

The droid answered affirmatively before inquiring for further details.

"We're low on options, so no, I don't care if they're underground or unregistered if a clansmen marked them reliable. We don't have enough bacta on board to do much, and I don't think we should dare to take too long in case there's a complication I'm missing. He's too aware: trying to scan deeper might wake him up which is not in the cards for several reasons... Yeah, just park nearby. I'll hover both him and the bike in and you can steer us there. I'll stay back with him since we don't have a good place to both keep him flat and secured in case of turbulence. See you in five."

Madara levered himself up at that point and started to take a good look around with the Sharingan. They likely wouldn't be back anytime soon and Utapau's hyperwinds would get rid of any evidence the very first time they came through.

There was... not a crater, but a circular area around where he'd first seen the white-haired man where the dirt was more powdered, and the Force itself still rolled and bubbled like storm clouds in the area, even if it was now very faint compared to what he'd first seen when he stopped and got off. The entire area had thick streaks of lingering Dark Force as if there'd been a knock-down, drag-out fight between several high level users with scores to settle, but no sign at all of a place they entered or exited or anything else that implied someone besides his attacker had been here.

Hell, there weren’t even any footprints towards the outer edge of this circle to indicate how the  _ other man _ had gotten here.

"There aren't impact marks so you didn't fall," Madara muttered, stalking back to glare down at the man. "You weren't dropped out of a speeder. You have wounds that didn't damage your clothing, but nothing to suggest you put them on after the injury. And weirdest thing of all, you're  _ blazing _ in the Light Side of the Force with no smudges of Darkness at all, but you're trained and alive past your majority. How in the sith-damned hells did you pull that off?"

He walked away, carefully grabbed the man's weapon where he'd dropped it earlier, and glared some more.

It should have been impossible. It nearly took off his head so it was definitely real, but it just couldn't be. It had a subtle thrum in the Force, it worked, it left proximity burns, but it was  _ absolutely impossible to find _ .

"How could anyone actually have a lightsaber?"


End file.
